Stassi Pyne with Bill 2

Bill is an 8-year-old Quarter Horse gelding.  He is also an award-winning barrel racer.  He works hard throughout the rodeo season and this leads to soreness and inflammation.  His rider/owner, Stassi Pyne, was introduced to the Assisi Loop by his Certified Equine Massage Therapist, Tanya Marsh of FreeMotion Equine Massage.  We recently took some time to talk with both of them about his case.

 

Introduction of Bill by his Equine Massage Therapist, Tanya Marsh, Certified ESMT.

 

I began working on Bill at the end of July 2013. Right away, I knew we were dealing with a hind quarter weakness. This was confirmed in my second session with Bill. His left hip was visibly lower than the right and the muscle structure surrounding the hip was in a heightened state of constriction. He was improving immensely!  However, when I work with a client who improves so much and yet has the same issue time after time, it is an indicator that there is a deeper issue or a possible chronic issue.

 

At this point, I recommended the Assisi Loop to Stassi Pyne, Bill’s owner, and rider. This has proven to be very beneficial. When I work with Bill now, I can feel and see a difference in the muscles’ tone and texture. The Assisi Loop helps keep the muscle supple and lessens the likelihood of further lactic acid adhesion. It is so much easier for me to work the hip region now and for the past month, he has shown no signs of pain or inflammation.  The Assisi Loop has proved vital to Bill’s overall health and quick recovery!

 

Interview with Bill’s Rider, Award-winning Barrel Racer, Stassi Pyne

 

Tell us a little bit about your rodeo career and the work that you do.

 

I’m a stay-at-home mom of 2 kids.  I ride and train racehorses. I do the barrel racing and I break-away rope a little bit.  Barrel racing has always been my passion since I was a kid.

 

And you’ve won some awards?

 

Yes, I have.  I won the 2012 Horse of the Year. That same year I won the World Champion Barrel Racing Title in the IPRA which is the International Professional Barrel Racing Association.  I was also the 2011 World Champion.  I just qualified for the IFR which is our finals.  I qualified on Bill, a horse that I totally trained myself.  It’s kind of a victory for me. He has good days and he has bad days.  But he’s young.  He just turned 8.  We have been winning the World most of the season this year.  He kind of lost it about mid-summer.  It was really hard for him to go as hard as we did.  Some weekends you hit 3 to 4 rodeos in a row.  It’s a lot of pressure on a horse.

 

Tell me more about what is going on with him and what you’re treating.

 

Close up of Bill with Loop

Actually, I was treating two different things and he ended up kicking through a fence so I started treating another.  He has a little soreness on his neck.  He’s not the first horse I’ve had this with.  I think it’s a racehorse thing—they go to the left and they leap and they jump and they twist their neck.  I tie the Assisi Loop with a string and hang it around his neck. It does it once or twice a day.  After that, I couldn’t tell that he was ever sore.

 

He pulled a gluteal medial muscle a year ago and I took him to Oklahoma for an assessment. They recommended an exercise program in addition to “blistering” the muscle. I wouldn’t say that I didn’t do the exercise program because I did and I was pretty faithful about it.  But then he kicked through a fence. He was playing with some colts and the fence didn’t break and he ran down the fence line instead of running away from it. It burned the inside of his hock.  It was the same leg that had the sore muscle. I couldn’t ride him because he was sore.  He got an infection under the skin and cellulitis.  It was horrible.  So I just put the Loop right where he was sore.  I pinned it under his blanket and turned it on. It seemed like it was no time and you could push all over and he wasn’t sore.  It played a big part in helping him.  Then I put the Loop on his leg a few times to help heal the wound–the accident took the hide and hair off and it was ugly. After treating him, the cellulitis went away.

 

I have used the Loop on his poll, too.  He had a sore poll this summer.  I took the Loop and I twisted it down smaller like it tells you to do and I put it up on the top of his head.  You may not be able to tell it’s doing anything, but when you stop doing it, it seems like they need it again.  It must have been helping because they’re sore when you stop and they weren’t sore before.

 

How are you using it? 

 

I’m using the Automatic Loops.  The vet told me how sore Bill was.  On the scoring system that he uses, Bill was one number away from being the sorest a horse could be. I figured that as sore as he was in that hip, I would leave the Loop pinned on his blanket so it would treat automatically every two hours.  He should only now be healing from this and he won rodeos four weekends in a row–barrel racing.  The first one he won by a big amount of time.  He won the second one by 2/10ths.  In the third, he placed every run and he got faster as he ran.  He has never done that his whole life.  Finally, he set an arena record in the fourth race. So, it’s doing something.  It’s helping.  That’s a big deal to me.

 

Bill with loop under his blanket

What did your vet, Dr. Emery, say?

 

He couldn’t make him sore anywhere.  He was a little sore in his stifle muscle or down the back of his legs but Bill’s always been sore there and I’ve always used the Equipulse at the clinic but that was before the Assisi.  I would like to try the Loops on there.  I would like to pin them on my blankets to treat those areas.  Because I feel like it would do the same thing but it’s less abrasive.  I use the Loops all the time and I feel like Bill likes it–it relaxes him.  You can tell when I put the blanket on him and I turn it on.  He knows whether it’s on or it’s off.  He feels something from it.

 

My vet was kind of skeptical when I told him about the Loop.  He’s a large animal vet.  He has the lasers and the shockwaves and all the treatments that they use out there.  I think everything is good for something.  But he said, ” I don’t feel anything.” And then one of the other vets that work at his practice asked, “Is that the Assisi Loop?”  She knew right away what it was.  And she said, “They do work.  I have worked on dogs and cats and been at clinics where they have used them and they do work.”  So once she told him they worked, he started to tell me where to use it on Bill.

 

I feel like this is probably not just helping Bill with the soreness.  It’s helping heal that muscle and making it stronger.  If it hadn’t healed him when I ran him, he probably would have still been sore and he wasn’t sore at all.  He shouldn’t have gotten over his gluteal medial tear as soon as he did.  I give all the credit to the Assisi Loop, for sure.  It definitely helped that.